Malfoy Enthusiasts
by mexicantt
Summary: "Why me? Why now? Why does it feel like everyone either of us could possibly have ever known is asking me to give you a chance? Why, Malfoy, why?"


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter or anything thus affiliated and am making no money from this work.

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><p>"I'm just saying that I think you should give him a chance. Because really, if even I was able to sit down and listen to him, stow my temper, and forgive him - surely you can at least give it a try?" With that, Ron downed the last of his tea, stood up from the table with his coat slung over his arm, and kissed the top of her head before heading down the street, basking in the anonymity the Muggle world offered them.<p>

She couldn't believe it.

A Weasley was encouraging her to give a Malfoy a chance.

At twenty-five years old, Hermione Granger was (in the eyes of many of her magical contemporaries) in very real danger of becoming an "old maid", even while ignoring the longer lifespan she had coming to her from not only being female but magical as well.

It wasn't that she didn't want to date or get married or even make the time to have a family; she'd had several relationships over the years. There was the short-lived fling with Harry when Ron had left them during the camping trip from hell that they had both agreed to never talk about. Their short affair had been borne of loneliness, the cold, and the need to feel something other than the despair over being left as a duo and not knowing where to go from there. While they didn't exactly want to bring it up ever again, it wasn't because it held horrible memories. Their lack of interest in the subject was more because it wasn't the kind of emotional relationship most people have when they are having sex. They provided each other with comfort of every kind and were content to leave it behind them when Ron returned.

Then there was the tempestuous disaster that was her relationship with Ron following the end of the war. For years, Hermione had pined after Ron, waiting for him to remove his head from his ass in order to finally see her and realize that he wanted her. It didn't matter to her that he had changed a lot physically as they grew up; she was in love with the boy he had been and the man he was and for the first month, they were happy. Then, they started with the petty fights, their insecurities showing in spurts of jealousy on both of their parts. It caused much in the way of fighting, fucking, and fucking while fighting. Both had quickly realized after that first big blowup that it was going nowhere good, but they had apparently needed that release of angst and tension because the relationship didn't really end until seven months later, with no one the wiser about how empty their fights became.

She tried dating a Muggle man named David, figuring that because she grew up as one it wouldn't be difficult to blend in, and she was right. The first two months of dating were wonderful, and Hermione was glad to be able to relax, to not have to worry that what she was doing might show up in the_ Daily Prophet_ or some other news rag. What she had failed to factor in were her friends, who came across as extremely inept in the Muggle world, with the exception of Harry. After he met her friends, Hermione was left fielding questions she didn't know how to answer. She had severely twisted the truth about where she had gone to school. Her explanation was that it was a very selective school in Scotland for gifted children, but after meeting her school mates, Dave was unable to reconcile the idea of a school for exceptionally gifted kids to apply to them as well. Eventually, the strain of living two lives proved to be too much and they broke it off. If the truth was that he dumped her because he found her to be too strange for his tastes, well, she could live with that. Of course, the real truth had been that he had caught her talking to her fireplace on more than one occasion as well as polishing a stick of wood before caressing it as lovingly as she caressed his cock, but none of her friends needed to find out about that. Ever.

After that, Hermione didn't think she could date another Muggle, so she tried her hand at a wizard who hadn't already been her friend. Well, more like he had to pursue her and persuade her that he was worth a chance.

Theodore Nott.

She knew so little of him in school, only knowing that he was reportedly nearly as clever as she and that he had never felt the need to join Draco Malfoy in his horrid teasing and bullying. That alone was almost enough to make her think he was worth a chance, and all it really took was some persistence and good manners before she agreed to a very tentative first date.

They had started out slowly. He took her for drinks at The Three Broomsticks, somewhere familiar and public so that she wouldn't feel at all threatened. For their second date, she picked a Muggle matinee movie and take-out pizza that they ate afterward in a park. Sometimes he would pick where they went, other times she, and sometimes they would plan together. She slept with him for the first time the night he took her to see a small production put on by a rag-tag group of _The Winter's Tale_, admitting that he had chosen the play to see where it was she had gotten her name from. It was the first time he had ever had to go blindly and alone into the Muggle world for anything and the action had touched Hermione more than she had believed it could.

Before she knew it they had been dating for nearly five months, and her parents wanted to be introduced. So, she took him to her childhood home to meet them. Her dad had cooked and her mother did most of the standard interrogation of the man brought home by her daughter. Things had turned out so well.

From there, they went on to more serious dating, their shagging reaching new heights as they finally traded those "three little words", and their connection deepened. It was on Hermione's 23rd birthday that Theo got on one knee in front of her friends and family at the surprise party he had orchestrated for her, and she accepted his proposal of marriage. It was finally time to meet Mrs. Nott, Theo's mother, and Hermione was nervous. She knew his father was a Death Eater and had been in Azkaban since the end of the war for crimes committed, but she didn't know what to expect from his mum and was too insecure to ask him beforehand. Sadly, that turned out to be a mistake that even Theodore could not have foreseen.

Oh, his mother knew they were dating, and all he had ever heard from her regarding her thoughts about it was that as long as he was happy, so would she be. Yet somehow, when he finally brought Hermione to his ancestral home, his mother was cold to her, and when he announced their engagement – well, it set off a bomb that decimated their relationship. Theo could not sacrifice his mother, the only family he had left outside of prison, for the sake of the love he had found with Hermione.

She was devastated. Theirs was the last real relationship she had been able to have, Hermione having believed herself to be truly in love and finding herself completely bereft at the loss of him in her life.

Of course, there was the almost obligatory string of one-night-stands in between relationships, but those didn't really count because a girl has _needs_ and toys can only go so far. They were missing the warmth of a real body that she could grab onto with her arms and legs and that could do the same for her. Hermione had found herself going out once in a while over the two years since her split with Nott to try and fill the void he managed to leave in her.

So, Hermione's love life didn't exactly have the best track record. Her friends had even begun to set her up on dates. Harry, the traitor, came first. She had made the mistake of complaining to him one day in her flat shortly after her last birthday about being alone and wanting to find someone to be with already.

She lamented over her failed loves, still not able to talk about her time with Theo without remembering how much it hurt. Her heart had healed, but it was still tender, and thoughts of him and what she almost had to call her own never failed to bring her down.

Harry let her get it out, listening to her rant and rave and talk until she became dejected and started crying. He even gingerly held her to him while Ginny went off to make some tea. After Hermione had calmed down, he suggested that she get out and date – and not just for a quick shag. He suggested a friend of his that they had both known in school, but wanted Hermione to go on this as a blind date.

Thus began her friends' attempts to get her to give Draco Malfoy a chance.

It had all led her to be here, at the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade Village, at the ungodly hour of two in the morning while early December snow sprinkled down on her.

She hadn't given in to this easily. When Harry set her up, Hermione had no idea that Draco would be waiting for her at the restaurant. She had seen Malfoy and made eye contact, then rushed right back out of the quaint little greasy spoon and over to Harry and Ginny's place to beat her best friend with her small clutch. Harry was unrepentant, though, insisting that Draco could be perfect for her if she would just give him a chance. She told Harry he could piss off, and stormed out of the flat.

Harry was only the first in a long line of people. All Hermione wanted was to find someone real, someone for _her_, and all anyone could do was point her in Malfoy's direction. After Harry came Ginny, which wasn't really a surprise considering she had to have known about the set-up, but then she heard from friends and people she respected and some people she hardly knew.

Luna Lovegood went about it in her own way, of course, talking about how the Crumpled-Horned Snorkack didn't exist to most people only because they weren't willing to believe in it, and didn't Hermione believe she should have a Crumple-Horned Snorkack of her own? It was only after a few days of ruminating on it and finally going to Ginny to see if she could possibly understand her classmate's advice that Hermione found out Luna had been talking about Draco Malfoy and not her imaginary creature.

Next she heard from Cormac McLaggen. The utter ass actually thought she should listen to him when it came to something as important as her love life and future. Apparently he and "Drake" had become acquaintances at some point in their working careers, and he took it upon himself to inform Hermione that if she was sure she didn't want to give Cormac himself another try, she could make it up to him by passing that chance along to "Drake". She wasn't sure if the nickname was something Malfoy liked to be called or if Cormac was just being his prattish self by using it, but it managed to make Hermione want to meet with the pointy blond even less than before.

Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil followed, double-teaming on her one day while she was shopping for new quills. They started with the usual small-talk, asking how she has been and what she had been up to. Then they less-than-stealthily changed the subject to her lengthy single status and asked if she was interested in dating. Not suspecting yet another in what was becoming quite the line of Malfoy enthusiasts, she agreed that she could be willing to go on a date if they could vouch for the guy. This time, she was told to meet her date at the London Eye midday for a picnic in three days' time, a Sunday.

She had gotten there early, wearing a simple long-sleeved dress with leggings and boots. Looking out over the Thames and watching the little cruise ships go by full of tourists, she lost herself in thought. Hermione had been amongst them a few years back when it had first opened, touring historical landmarks throughout Britain with her mother and father in an attempt to heal some of the damage her erasure of their memories during the war had caused. Her parents had thought it a good idea while they were in London to get their daughter onto the smooth ride to help with her fear of heights, and Hermione had been surprised to find that it had. Lost in her reminiscing, Hermione failed to notice the man who came up to her until he brushed her shoulder with a single peach rose. Turning toward what she thought was her second blind date in as many months, Hermione was shocked to say the least to see gray eyes looking down at her from the smooth, pale face of one Draco Malfoy. Before she even had a chance to open her mouth, he held up two tickets for the attraction and asked her to please not run away from him this time. Something in her felt ashamed of her previous behavior, but it wasn't incentive enough, and she couldn't bring herself to stay there with him. She shook her head at him and did literally run away until she was in a place she felt safe enough to Apparate from.

Two weeks after that debacle, Neville Longbottom managed to corner her while she was having lunch at the Leaky Cauldron. He was dating the new owner, Hannah Abbott, and used that to his advantage while practically forcing Hermione to hear him out. He told her she was giving Gryffindors a bad name, and that she ought to at least hear Malfoy out instead of turning tail every time.

She found Harry the day after her one-sided talk with Neville and scolded him for telling all and sundry about her relationship issues and her wanting to settle down. He denied telling anyone anything, with the exception of Ron, but really she should have expected that one anyway. Harry then proceeded to tell her that he and Ginny were going out and that she would have to berate him for whatever other fictional offenses he had committed against her another time. With all the wind let out of her sails, Hermione chose to walk for a few miles to think before using "deliberation, determination, and destination" to get her home. If Harry hadn't been the one to tell everyone, then how did they all know to come to her about this?

Over the next six weeks, she heard from more people. Some were her friends, some were his friends, and some were completely unexpected. It wasn't until she ran into Theo outside of her favorite Muggle bookstore two days after Christmas that she finally felt herself relent. He knew she frequented that shop as she had dragged him there more than a dozen times during their relationship. Hermione didn't want to give him time to speak, but he took it regardless, and amidst apologies for hurting her, he asked her to please give Draco a chance. With a sigh, she turned from him and went for some tea. It was there that Ron found her and gave her his little speech, which led to Ron's letter tied to little Pigwidgeon that asked her if she was finally ready to take the chance everyone but her thought was right.

So there she was, sitting with her back to the Shack and peering through the shadows the moonlight created. It was from one of these shadows that she spied a white-blond head peek out, the rest of the figure shrouded in black to help ward off the cold. She stood as he approached, aware that her features were in shadow and that he would be hard-pressed to see her while he himself was left exposed.

It was time to stop thinking, and start talking.

"Why?"

Her words stopped him short about one and a half meters away from her.

"Why what, exactly?"

"Why me? Why now? Why does it feel like everyone either of us could possibly have ever known is asking me to give you a chance? Why, Malfoy, _why_?"

She could practically see him bite his tongue, forcing whatever taunt had sprung to his lips down and trying to form the right words to answer her. But she didn't want to wait, so she kept on.

"Why did other people have to be the ones to bring me here? Why have you never bothered to write to me yourself, to confront me yourself? Why did you make my ex-fiancé talk to me for the first time in two years just to tell me to let you in?"

At this, something in him seemed to snap. He closed the distance between them and grabbed a hold of her arms with a gentleness that belied the fierce expression on his face.

"Why, Hermione? You want to know why? It's because I can't. I can't be near you and not have to touch you, hold you, taste you and make you mine. I can't be near you without lashing out at you, hurting you in some way, so that you don't get sucked in with me and all of my baggage, but I just can't do that anymore."

Once again, the word slipped from her lips.

"Why?"

Malfoy hung his head down and let his hands slip down her arms until they met her own, where they held on tightly as though he was afraid she would run yet again.

"Come with me. Please. Just come with me and I'll give you your answers. Please, just give me this chance."

Shaking her head back and forth, Hermione's words once again slipped out before they had her permission.

"I must be out of my mind."

With that, she stepped into him and held on, the squeeze of Apparition taking them both away.

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><p><strong>AN:** Thanks to my beta Sam for a super quick turn around on this. This fic was originally written for the DMHG fic exchange on livejournal for kataclysmic.

The request: **Would you prefer an art or fic gift?** Fic.  
><strong>Preferred rating:<strong> R (NC-17 - nothing wrong with a bit of sex if it's well written).  
><strong>Describe what you'd like in as few wordskeywords as possible:** Dark (not the genre: shadows, absence of light, etc), post-Hogwarts, snark.  
><strong>Optional: Song, Poem, or Quote (titleoriginal creator):** _Brilliant Mind_, by Furniture.  
><strong>Dealbreakers (absolute no-no's):<strong> No baby!fic, no Voldemort wins.


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